BCBusiness
Lori Brotto, Executive director, Women’s Health Research Institute, is a winner in the Change Maker category of the 2025 Women of the Year Awards
When Lori Brotto took a career test in grade nine, it told her that her personality type was suited to be a psychologist. “Fourteen-year-old me said, ‘Great, I have a career path now,’” she laughs. “But it was a series of twists and turns that led me to where I am today.”
One of those twists was how she became a sex researcher. When she was approaching professors for her first volunteer research job, the only person who didn’t turn her away was someone studying sexual dysfunction in rats. But a pivotal moment for Brotto was when Viagra hit the market and became a topic no one could stop talking about. “I asked the next logical question, which was, ‘Is there a female Viagra?’”
The answer was no, and in fact there weren’t any evidence-based treatments for female sexual dysfunction, even though Brotto says that it’s twice as common in women than in men. “To me, it’s not just a science problem, it’s a communication problem,” she explains. Which is how she ended up on what she calls a “parallel track” in knowledge translation and the science of how we share science.
Brotto’s focus on communication also led her to clinical training around sexual health and mindfulness. As a mindfulness practitioner dedicated to sharing science with the public, she wrote Better Sex Through Mindfulness: How Women Can Cultivate Desire and its accompanying workbook, through which she helps put into action the practices for sexual health that she and her team spent years researching.
Currently, Brotto is shining a light on menopause, a topic that affects almost all women at midlife but has traditionally been hidden in the shadows of the health-care system. Though menopause has had what she refers to as “a moment” in our collective consciousness, she explains that between uninformed, overly simplified and flat-out incorrect messaging on social media, the correct and impactful information doesn’t always reach women where it needs to, leading women to dismiss their symptoms.
To combat this, she and her team at the Vancouver-based Women’s Health Research Institute have been disseminating menopause-related information to the public. According to Brotto, this has made some pretty big waves. “It’s changed how UBC teaches their medical students,” she says. “Because of the work that we’ve done… for the first time ever, they are now teaching menopause education to young doctors. It’s all worth it because someone is going to walk into that future doctor’s office and have a symptom and they’re not going to be dismissed.” Instead, they’ll be provided with the evidence-based information that Brotto has so passionately championed.
Discover our full list of 21 BCBusiness 2025 Women of the Year award winners here.